Come, take my hand, and walk with me in the garden for a while and we will have our ‘friendly conversation’.
The garden is a symbol of beauty and peace. In the garden are sweet-smelling roses with beautiful colours and shapes, there is the soft sound of water and the freshness in the air from the water. The little birds are enjoying themselves and voicing their delight.
So too we are happy here, you and I, in this moment, rejoicing in the beauty of God’s creation and the pleasant experiences of the human condition, of being alive and creative and at peace. In the midst of the turmoil of human ambition and tragedy, in the whirlpool of human machination and manipulation, it is important to locate one’s consciousness in the still point of your being – to recognize stillness and serenity. As you know, the Sufi path to this still point is by breathing deeply and with awareness, and concentrating the heart with dhikr Allah so that the mind sheds its multiple areas of focus and concern, its worries and distractions and inner disputations, and we begin to clear the clouds and confusion from our inner landscape. As this settles and clears, so then do we begin to relate to the heart and its feelings, messages, visions, and guidance.
The learning from the heart brings with it clarity and certitude, simple insight and integrity of purpose, whereas the machinations and convoluted reasonings of the intellect bring more questions, more doubts, more confused feelings, and little prospect of peace.
Become heart-centred – from the centre of awareness which is the heart, like the flower of the rose, there is the centre of perfumed sweetness which radiates outward, within your being, in harmonious design, like the petals of the rose.
The mind with its intellectual engagement with the manipulations and stratagems of man’s worldly ambitions and desires are the thorns. We focus not on the thorns but on the perfumed flower which is found, to delight us and amaze us, within the thorns of the rose-bush.
Let us walk together in this rose-garden, and enjoy the peaceful sweetness of the roses and the garden, in this moment.
The rose exists in the heart, so it is carried within you at all times.
The poetry surrounding this from the Sufis is only reflecting the reality of this experience. To carry the heart message within you at all times, and not to become barren of blooms and merely caught up in the branches entangling one with thorns.
To be ‘of the moment’ is to be aware inwardly of the fragrance of the heart-rose at all times, and for this experience to be the point, the still point, about which we turn. And we turn about it in adoration of God, in joy at the gift of being given the life that we are, with all its potential and talents and capacity for understanding.
The rose exists
in order to express its love;
its very being is the reason
why we live
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